Chris Poindexter

Chris Poindexter is a freelance writer, photographer and videographer. He has spent the last four years on the road writing two books on full-time RV living. Besides photography, Chris writes about personal finance, science, technology, travel and fine dining. He and his wife are currently living large on Florida's treasure coast and travel extensively. Besides a writer, Chris was a software engineer, CIO of a medical services company and volunteer firefighter.

Lens lust is a terrible thing. It didn’t quite make the list of the 7 Deadly Sins, but can still be an agonizing process that will have your significant other wondering if Zeiss Prime is the codename for an escort service.

Choosing the right lenses is also a lonely decision. I get questions almost daily from people wondering which lens they should buy and the only really good answer I can give them is which lens I would get for myself. There are so many lenses in so many configurations that figuring out the “right” choice can be seriously daunting.Read more…

In the last two installments we covered basic three and five light studio lighting and that was good. Studio lighting is great if you have a place to work and provided your subject can come to you.

Studio lighting is great but what about when it’s time to take the lighting show on the road? Photo by comedy_nose via Flckr

There’s an old Arabic proverb that says when you can’t bring the mountain to your studio, you have to find a way to light the mountain, or something like that. I may be paraphrasing just a bit.Read more…

This is another in a series of articles on studio lighting that I put together with help from Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne, Florida. Karl graciously opened his studio to me and patiently went through the basics of lighting a studio portrait.

Last time we went over a fairly basic three-point lighting setup for studio photography and that was fun and you can do quite a lot just by moving the lights around and adjusting your camera settings. But for many only using three lights left you wanting more.

More lights, you say! You want to burn more power! Yeah, buddy, now you’re talking my language! So you want it bigger; well, my friend, step right this way.

This begins a series of articles on studio lighting that I put together with help from Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne, Florida. Karl graciously opened his studio to me and patiently went through the basics of lighting a studio portrait.

Portrait lighting is one of those deceptive subjects where it’s easy to grasp the concept, but can take years to master the application. Yet when all the pieces come together it can be magic. Getting all the move parts of a great portrait to come together at the same time can be a little frustrating, but all the effort seems like nothing the first time you see a great portrait hanging on the wall and realize you shot that!

A great portrait is one that the subject and people who know them leave on the wall for decades, a shot that not only shows what a person looked like but defines them. But before the glory comes the tough march up the hill of learning.

Some elements of studio photography are surprisingly technical and to keep it from sounding like a university lecture, I’ll need to break up the topics a little. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I will be covering some of the less exciting subjects like light ratios, lighting styles and posing in later articles.

Great timelapse photography is part art, part science, and a dash of high tech filmmaking. While the mechanics of shooting timelapse are relatively straightforward, learning the art may be a slower process.

Many of the technical decisions of a timelapse will be dictated by balancing an array of variables such as the subject, location, the length of time of the event, lighting conditions and the limitations of your camera equipment.